(Adnkronos) – Pro-Russian hackers from NoName057 have been attacking Belgian networks for 5 days, crippling the website of the Flemish Parliament and several national media outlets, including Belga News and De Standaard, just days before local elections on Sunday 13th. “We continue to send DDoS greetings to Belgium,” the pro-Russian collective said on Telegram. Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks involve overloading servers with requests, making websites inaccessible for some time.
“The analysis of cybersecurity experts is that these attacks cannot in any way interfere with the elections,” reassured Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. Flemish Interior Minister Hilde Crevits upped the ante by guaranteeing that “voting computers are not connected to the internet in any way and therefore cannot be hacked.”
This week hackers targeted the websites of several Belgian municipalities, government and port websites, as well as banking services and the Center for Cybersecurity Belgium (Ccb). The Ccb stated that the attacks are not “dangerous” and represent only an “inconvenience”.
With this wave of cyberattacks, the NoName057 group wanted to respond to Belgium’s continued support for Ukraine and in particular its recent announcement that it would consider the proposal to purchase and transfer three Caesar howitzers to Kiev: “The Belgian government will soon be examining a proposal to purchase and transfer three Caesar artillery units to Ukraine – said the hacker group on Telegram – We decided to pay a visit to Russophobic Belgium to show them how the initiatives in support of the Kiev criminal regime end”. NoName057 finally hinted at further unrest on election day, next October 13th.
